This article explores intuitive eating, a non-diet approach to health and wellness that emphasizes listening to your body's natural hunger and fullness cues. It highlights the struggles of restrictive diets and how intuitive eating can help cultivate a healthier relationship with food and body image.
Megan Roantree on how intuitive eating can change how we feel about food and our bodies.Hands up if you’ve tried at least one restrictive diet in your lifetime. Maybe you’ve stopped yourself from eating something you like because you feel like you don’t deserve it. Have you ever looked in the mirror and had negative thoughts about your body? It doesn’t have to be like this. There is a way to have a healthy relationship with food and your body.
So we’ve got this catch-22 because if we go by the plan then we go to bed hungry, which is not a nice experience and you’re not honouring the needs of your body, but if we honour the body we feel guilty because we broke the ‘rules’ of the diet. So dieting is disconnecting us and bringing us away from our interceptive awareness. Whereas intuitive eating reconnects us with ourselves and gives us permission to listen to the body’s signals and honour them and respond to them appropriately”.
Niamh was frustrated by the focus on food plans and weight loss in her profession. “When I was doing my yoga teacher training and I was really interested in this concept of the mind-body connection. It never really sat right with me to feel like I had to tell people what, when and how to eat. I wouldn’t like anyone to tell me so it felt very restrained.
So yes we are allowing all foods in, unconditionally, and that’s the real freedom around intuitive eating but we’re connecting to the messages our body is giving us alongside that. This is a checking in not a checking out process.” The second misconception is intuitive eating doesn’t really care about your health.
She adds: “Health is more than what you can see on the outside. A huge part of the intuitive eating process is healing your relationship with food. There is a part that looks at improving your health, but you can only do that when you have a foundation and a healthy relationship with food and that’s why the books ‘reestablish’ is all about reestablishing those healthy behaviours”. While work is involved, it’s not forever, and it’s work that will be of huge benefit.
Really get into it, and feel it. Is it missed drinks with the girls or the preoccupation with yourself on a night out because you can’t be present or not taking opportunities at work because you don’t feel worthy or not putting yourself out there on the dating scene because you’re terrified of rejection because of body image issues. There is so much cost that comes with this. That can really help us put into perspective what we want to prioritise.
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